Upinder Singh

This is not popular history by any means. This is more like assorted topics in social and cultural history that spans vast timespans and geographies and delves into all of them at an excruciating level of detail. I can see that this book might be useful for graduate students and researchers. I picked it up hoping to learn about the broad contours of Indian political history and it is just not the right book for that.

A competent work by an eminent academic on the early phase of archaeology and the Archaeological Survey of India in the British era, mainly during the latter half of the 19th century. As such it gives prominence to the record of Sir Arthur Cunningham, the first Director General of the ASI, and his contemporaries. There is a lot of interesting material on the different policy and strategic predilections of the different actors, the inter-personal and professional differences and disputes, the show more often damaging efforts of 'amateur' archaeologists in the initial period, and the lack of cohesion, unified view, or even a coherent policy on the issues of protection, conservation, restoration, rebuilding, of archaeological remains, or even the policy on distribution of artifacts between private collections, museums in India, and museums in Britain or other parts of the world. However, the work may have gained from a more forthcoming expression of the author's own views on these issues, e.g. on the restoration (rebuilding?) of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya, or the attitude of local people to preservation or destruction of existing old structures. Further, the real work of scientific archaeology is stated to have been institutionalised only later in the first half of the 20th century, especially with Marshall as the Director General of the ASI, and so the reader would have profited if the account had been extended to this period and included a comparison with the contemporary scene as well. show less